Business Continuity Planning

Although, fortunately, emergencies occur rarely, when they do they can have a devastating impact on the local community. Incidents, such as a major fire, flood, loss of staff, loss of utilities or communication failure, have the potential to disrupt normal business routine. In recent studies of businesses caught up in such incidents, it has been shown that those who have Business Continuity Plans in place are far more likely to recover their operation and minimise their loss of trade.

Did you know?

• 80% of businesses affected by a major incident close down within 18 months
• 90% of businesses that lose data from a disaster go out of business within 2 years
• Only 47% of organisations have a specific Business Continuity Plan in place.
• 94% of organisations who have invoked their Business Continuity Plan agreed that they had significantly reduced the impact of the disruption
• 43% of organisations over the past year were disrupted by loss of IT, while over one in three experienced loss of people (35%). 30% experienced loss of telecommunications.

(Source: Chartered Management Institute Business Continuity Survey)

What is Business Continuity Management?

Business Continuity Management is widely recognised as a good management process which provides a framework for ensuring the resilience of your business to threats and challenges. This has been recognised nationally by the Government and as a result the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has been introduced to address this and other issues to help protect you and your business.

The process of Business Continuity Management (BCM) is defined by the Business Continuity Institute as:

“a holistic management process that identifies potential impacts that threaten an organisation and provides a framework for building resilience with the capability for an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities”

Why have a Business Continuity Plan

Business Continuity needs to be considered by small companies and organisations as well as larger corporations. Understanding how you can get your organisation up and running quickly after an incident means that you are much more likely to be able to provide employment, meet customer need and, ultimately, generate profit.

Embedding business continuity and having a structured, well developed and rehearsed plan helps your business to recover and return to ‘business as usual.’

Effective Business Continuity Management arrangements will:

• Reduce the likelihood of a disruption to service or production
• Minimise impact if a disruption occurs
• Reduce the financial losses you incur
• Prevent loss of business to competitors
• Enhance your reputation and build customer confidence
• Build staff confidence
• Safeguard your market share and give your business a competitive advantage
• Ensure that you meet legislative and regulatory requirements where appropriate
  

Developing your Business Continuity Plan

A Business Continuity Plan will enable a business to respond in a controlled manner to any disruption caused by internal or external factors. The size, scale and nature of your organisation will dictate how comprehensive your Plan needs to be – there are many self-assessment tools available to help you gauge how prepared your business is. (The Advice and Assistance page gives details of the sources of this information).

Your Business Continuity Management arrangements should include planning for scenarios such as:

• Loss of, or access to premises – the implications of temporarily relocating your business
• Loss of staff
• Loss of key suppliers or contractors
• Loss of systems (IT and Telecommunications)
• Loss of specialist equipment
• Loss of utilities eg water, gas, electricity
• Disruption to transport
  

To aid with the development of Business Continuity Plans, a life cycle has been developed and is illustrated below:

(Source: The lifecycle diagram, BSI British Standards BS 25999-1)

The Cabinet Office Business Continuity Tool kit  is designed to assist organisations to put in place business continuity arrangements. The toolkit is a step-by-step guide to the six elements that make up the business continuity lifecycle as set out in the Business Continuity Management standard BS 25999.

Contact Information
Send us a Message	Business Continuity Unit Tameside MBC Council Offices Wellington Road Ashton under Lyne Lancs OL6 6DL View local map
0161 342 2891
0161 342 3902